


when you move (i can recall something that's gone from me)

by imwithnomad



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bisexual Steve Rogers, F/M, Hurt Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Past Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 03:45:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16736481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imwithnomad/pseuds/imwithnomad
Summary: Following the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve and Natasha are (emotionally) compromised.





	when you move (i can recall something that's gone from me)

**Author's Note:**

> title directly inspired by the wonderful song "movement" by hozier. see end for notes.

Steve jumps awake to the sound of gun fire. He's dropped to the ground in seconds, crawling on his elbows and reaching for his shield and for the person next to him. _Bucky, get the fuck up, can hear mortar shells flying like Hitler is putting on a parade_. There isn't a smart-ass remark and Steve starts to panic. There's nothing next to him, not even a shield. Bucky won't get up.  But wait. That's not right. Bucky never slept, was never able to sleep after Azzano. Something wasn't right. Steve feels around some more. Steve blinks but now he can't see anything, just the lining of his bed roll. He hears more gun fire but it's quieter. It's going away. _We're safe, Buck_ , Steve thinks.

Steve Rogers comes to his fucking senses about a minute later after hitting his head on the corner of a coffee table. He's on all fours and, upon closer inspection, realizes he is feeling carpet.

The noise hasn’t stopped though, and Steve blankly looks around his living room. Living room. It takes several more seconds for him to realize the sound he’s hearing isn’t gun fire, or even a threat. There’s knocking at the door. Annoyed with himself, Steve stumbles to get up and approaches the front door. He doesn’t bother to check, assuming it’s Sam coming to check up on him again. Instead, Steve opens the door to the very person who would berate him for not checking who was on the other side: Natasha Romanoff, donning blacks and greys and an oversized hood, nods at him like this was planned. Steve nods back, worried he’s still dreaming, and steps back as she strides into his apartment.

“Are you...here?” Steve asks after several beats of silence. She stands in his entryway, determinedly facing away from him.

Natasha turns on her heels but barely spares him a glance. Steve follows her pace, spinning like slow motion to keep his eyes on her. She stands with her back to him still as they cross the threshold into the kitchen. Steve doubles back to lock the door and hurries into the kitchen.

Natasha is looking around--the kitchen offers a view of the rest of the small apartment--and Steve realizes she’s (probably) only seen this one from the outside. After everything with SHIELD went to hell, and after Steve left the hospital in Washington DC, he got the fuck out of there as fast as humanly possible. He found this small place in Queens after turning down Tony’s offer to stay in the Tower. The idea of sharing a living space with another person seemed impossible, no matter how big the space was. Steve chose Queens because, well, it wasn’t Brooklyn. It’s less predictable, Steve had convinced himself, since he didn’t want to be found. Or seen. The more thorny truth is that Steve can no longer bear to step foot in Brooklyn, truly knowing now all that he’s lost.

It leads him to wonder, however dispassionately, how Natasha so easily found him here.

“Wait. You don’t use the door.” Steve accuses, crossing his arms.

Natasha turns just enough for Steve to see the tiny bit of profile that’s visible under her hood. She appears to be wearing more than one jacket. She flexes her right hand, making a fist then splaying her fingers out at her side. Repeat.

She shrugs. “Was gonna use the window but I didn’t want to poke the sleeping bear on the couch.”

Steve opens his mouth to retort but barely gets a word in edgewise before a tiny river of blood splits a jagged line down her face. Then another, racing from her hairline down to her jaw. She doesn’t flinch, only continues to watch him. Steve clenches his mouth shut, his jaw flexing in probably the most anything he’s felt in days. It breaks the baseline of utter hopelessness, at least. This, Steve can help. This, he can do the right thing.

-

Natasha allows him to usher her into one of the haphazard kitchen chairs (Steve never really finished furnishing this place). She doesn’t say a word as he reaches under the sink to pull out a first aid kit that for some reason, Sam left for him a few weeks ago.

Natasha removes her own hood this time, eyes flicking to meet his every move as he fumbles with gauze pads and rubbing alcohol and latex-free gloves that he ends up tossing over his shoulder in frustration after they rip on his knuckles. Steve hesitates, sterilized gauze poised before her face. She gives him an indulgent, somber nod like she is doing him a kindness by allowing him to take care of her.

“Your face looks better than the last time I saw you,” Natasha says conversationally as Steve thumbs his fingers over the spot in her hairline that the bleeding seems to be coming from.

Steve frowns, annoyed. “Yours doesn’t.” he retorts, pausing his task to look at her face again. Steve has always been useless at first aid (Bucky, it’s because it was always Bucky cleaning him up, fight after illness after fight)-- blood still stains her face in places it had begun to dry and Steve couldn’t scrub off.  
She huffs out through her nose, brief second of laughter before she returns to watching him carefully.

“what are you doing back here so soon, besides getting hurt? Thought you were making new covers,” steve says some time later, poking uselessly at her ribs, feeling her skin jump under his fingertips.

Her silence forces him to look up at her. She glares at him, utterly unimpressed. “that was a cover.”

Steve takes a moment to recover. “Oh.” she could have been clear to him and he still wouldn’t have remembered. “Where did you go, then?”

“First Congress,” she replies, easily slipping out of his hands to peer around him. “You have any alcohol in this godforsaken kitchen?”

“First?” Steve asks, ignoring her, though she doesn’t elaborate.

She crosses her arms expectantly and Steve blatantly ignores her, ripping medical tape with more force than necessary. She raises her eyebrows at him as he holds out a square piece of gauze lined with jagged tape, one eye squinted like he’s trying to hang a frame on a blank space of wall.

“I don’t want that hack job on my face,” she snaps, taking his hands in hers and moving them away from her face. Her tone doesn’t match her gentle grip before she pulls away. She mutters under her breath, rummaging through the kit until most of the contents are spilled out onto the counter. .

Steve puts his hands up in mock surrender, watching as she unpeels a bandaid and carefully lines it up with the slash on her head. She does this two more times until it’s completely covered.

She drops her hands to her sides and sighs. “No drinks, then?”

“No, but your ribs don’t seem to be broken, at least.”

“Thrilling,” responds natasha with her usual cynicism.

Steve lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding; the familiarity of her crass friendship tugs at something in his gut. He missed her, he realizes, as acutely as he could miss somebody who wasn’t--

Well. someone who was dead but wasn’t.

When Steve was able to pull himself out of a striking memory of desperate blue eyes framed by dark circles and a pale face surrounded by flames and the stench of death and cold, calloused, bloody palm slipping out of his, he comes enough to his goddamn senses to realize Natasha is watching him. Assessing him, almost, her gaze critical.

“What is it?” he asks, aware she didn’t show up to his apartment in the middle of the night to watch him fall to pieces.

Natasha tilts her head at him, like the movement might allow her better access to his brain. Steve gets self conscious, scrubs his hand over the back of his neck. Natasha speaks very quickly.

"I thought I trusted myself." she says

"You should," Steve replies immediately.

"Fury didn't."

"Oh."

Steve understands now, lights flickering on in his brain. He flashes back to their not-so-elusive jailbreak from the back of a SWAT truck, their escape to the underground bunker where they found Nick Fury, alive. Steve remembers her the night he was shot, _c’mon Nick, don’t do this to me don’t do this to me_. He’d never heard anyone call Fury by his first name before.

"He took me in and he still..." she trails off, huffs as though telling Steve all this requires an immense physical effort. "It's fair. He knows what I've done. Who I worked for. He knew everything.”

"You were loyal to him for years, that must mean something." Steve insists.

She's quiet for a moment, not tearing that intense gaze away from him. Her expression is unusually open, blinking slowly at him like a cat. She changes the subject. "You’ve been having nightmares too?."

Given her usual perceptiveness, Steve knows she only phrases this as a question to be kind to him, to give him the option to lie if he wanted. Given her silent admission, it didn’t seem fair or even right to lie about it. “You’ve talked to Sam, I guess?”

“No.” she says simply. “Your shirt is drenched with sweat and it’s twenty degrees outside.”

Steve glances down in alarm to realize she’s right; all around his collar is so wet it’s a whole shade darker than the rest of his shirt and he’s suddenly aware of the sweat prickling at his spine. When their gazes meet again it’s with somber acknowledgement.

“You and Barnes?” Natasha asks softly. She swings her legs back and forth where they hang from the table as if she’s fidgety. The whole idea seems ridiculous. Her feet very gently knock into his shins.

Trade damage for damage--fair enough, and he figures he owes her as much. Steve is strangely comforted like it's some blood pact they made . The incessant tap of her toes against his legs keep him grounded. She asked the same thing, back in a stolen pickup and an abandoned stretch of road. Steve had buried the impulse to swerve the car off the road and gripped the steering wheel hard enough for it to start creaking. Now, steve clenches and unclenches his fists at his sides five times before he’s able to jerkily nod.

“Mmm.” Natasha hums, in something like understanding or knowing or sympathy. She’s had his number. She doesn't ask any more and Steve wouldn't have the answers even if she did. “I'm sorry,” is what she says. Means it.

“Yeah.”

She gives him a small smile like the one she gave after they both nearly died, raw and exhausted in Sam's guest bedroom. After they both realized their redemption was for nothing. Steve returns the gesture with so much as a grimace, the very effort causing his face to ache with exhaustion. They sit in brooding silence. Steve becomes so used to the taps against his legs that he only notices once she stops. He meets her eye and she’s giving him a critical look again, observing.

“Steve.”

“Hm?”

“Don’t tell anyone about this.”

Before Steve can even react, Natasha has wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face firmly into his shoulder. It takes Steve a full five seconds for his body to catch up to his brain so he can settle his arms around her back and pull her closer to his chest.

“Nat,” he starts, mortified to hear his own voice cracking.

“Shut up,” she mumbles, equally horrified, her voice muffled by his own shirt.

Steve is grateful. He does. He closes his eyes and drops his head. He can’t remember the last time somebody hugged him--certainly not in the months since SHIELD fell and he spent most of his time buried in a file that held no answers. Her seemingly unconditional affection for him makes him ache. Steve holds her tighter until he’s worried he might be hurting her but Natasha doesn’t let up.

Natasha burrows her head farther against his shoulder, her breath hot through his shirt like she’s burning his skin. Her thighs squeeze him around his waist. He thinks to put a hand in her hair but stops himself before he does. He rubs her back a little and thinks she might like it. She becomes less of a coiled spring and turns incrementally softer against him. This, Steve can pay attention to. Like this, he isn’t as tempted to think about how he used to be Natasha’s size, smaller, even, and tuck himself against Bucky the same way to keep from freezing to death in the winters. It doesn’t hurt as much like this. If his chest hurts it isn't because he has bronchitis.

They’re like that for a while, or maybe just a minute. Steve’s head is still swirling when Natasha loosens her grip on him and moves to pull away. Steve lets her but she doesn’t end up going far. He looks down at her and for once she isn’t looking at him. He’s been in close proximity to her before, in the field or sparring after a shitty mission or when she kissed his cheek, but it was never like this. He’s close enough to see what she doesn’t let anybody see, something that is unmistakably intentional. There are light red marks on her bottom lip from where she’d worried it with her teeth; slightly greasy hair that he realizes is shorter than the last time he saw her; the dried blood and bruise under left eye. How her mouth is still tilted in a frown.

Steve doesn’t mention it but he knows she knows he’s looking. Her eyes flick up to meet his but instead her gaze finds his mouth first, meeting Steve where he is. Her hand is at the back of his neck and Steve doesn’t know how it got there but when she presses her palm against his skin to bring him closer to her he goes easily. Steve could count her individual eyelashes, now, if he wanted to. Natasha doesn’t do anything, not really. She drags her nose against his and parts her lips close to his but that’s it but that’s enough. She exhales and her breath ripples across his skin and Steve feels heat spread from the back of his neck to his face. He feels like he might pass out. She doesn’t kiss him; she’s waiting for him.

Steve isn’t sure if Natasha is seducing him but he decides he doesn’t care. They make quick, flashing eye contact and then Steve, not knowing what the fuck he’s doing, leans in the rest of the way and presses his lips against hers.

Natasha's lips are soft and warm and so is she, her hands on him grounding him in the same way as if they were sparring. The light weight of her hand on his chest reminds him of Peggy and Steve visibly sags against her. Natasha takes control of this, too, licking into his mouth until he whimpers with it. Now, Steve does slip his fingers into her hair, moving it gently back from her face.

"Tell me to stop" Natasha whispers in a harsh gasp of breath as she breaks away. She tastes like copper and danger and safety and Steve shudders. His grip on her shoulders tighten.

Steve vehemently shakes his head, so out of breath the movement makes him dizzy. "No," he breathes. His heart thumps painfully in his chest. Her lips are swollen from kissing him. Her cheeks are pink. He wonders if she’d let him touch.

Steve leans back in to kiss her but is barred by Natasha’s forearm across his chest, as reinforcing as steel. She forces herself to look more clear. “Don’t do something stupid just because you’re grieving, Rogers.” she says firmly.

Grieving was certainly an interesting word for what he was doing. He supposes she’s right. “Don’t do something stupid just because you’re grieving, Romanoff.” Steve repeats, meeting her severe look with one of his own.

Natasha manages to look impressed as she raises an eyebrow at him. She smiles, maybe the first real one she’s given him tonight. Wordlessly, she drops her arm and leans back, both palms down against the table. She lifts her leg and rests her heeled boot against Steve’s shoulder, rolling her ankle at him. It’s a genuine invitation and Steve laughs in spite of it all. He tugs off her boots with as much grace as he can manage, dropping them over his shoulder and met with laughed off protests of “hey, those are expensive.”

Natasha tugs him back in by the front of his shirt and kisses him, this time with her teeth taking hold of his bottom lip, going slow until Steve learns to reciprocate. When he sucks her bottom lip between his teeth she groans. Steve feels his chest lighten. It escalates quickly after that.

.

It’s not so much that Steve knows what he’s doing but that Natasha knows what she wants--she traps him with her legs, one hand slipping into his hair and the other she uses to scratch at the column of his throat whenever he slips his tongue where she’s guided him.

It sends endless shivers up Steve’s spine, the soft warmth of her and how her body yields for him, how she pushes forth and lets her mouth fall open once he gets the rhythm down just right. Maybe she laughs something about Steve’s learning curve and maybe he returns the laugh while trying to swallow her whole, too.

When he moves to just suck on her clit and slip two fingers into her, Steve feels confidence surge through him as her back arches off the kitchen table. This, at least, doesn’t feel too much like foreign territory. He rolls his wrist forward in a steady rhythm and he closes his eyes. He focuses on the tightness around his fingers, on her thighs trembling around his shoulders.

Natasha’s moans are barely audible but Steve still strains to listen to her, moans against her whenever she tugs his hair encouragingly. Despite her utter reciprocation, Steve is still surprised when he feels a rush of wetness pulse against his fingers. Natasha gasps and rolls her hips against his face, his hand, until she slumps back on the table out of breath. A triumphant little laugh escapes her lips. “Steve, you know--”

She’s cut off by Steve nearly yanking her off the table in his haste. Steve has her gathered in his arms easily, the table gone from beneath her. Natasha quickly wraps her legs around him so she doesn’t fall, only to realize his grip on her was unfaltering to begin with. She stares at him hungrily, Steve’s entire face burning as she leans in to lick the glistening moisture off of his face.

They don’t make it farther than the living room floor.

As easily as Steve was able to pick her up, Natasha was able to drop them without much bruising involved. Once Steve is able to catch up, Natasha is halfway through pulling his clothes off, something she’s able to manage while keeping her tongue halfway down his throat.  
“Jesus fucking hell,” she murmurs against his lips as her eyes roam his bare chest, abdomen.

“Tell me how you really feel,” Steve mutters self-consciously. He reaches for the hem of her shirt and she puts her arms over her head, grinning a little silly.

Steve hesitates at her rib cage and Natasha smiles indulgently at him. “Don’t be nervous, Steve.” she teases, something a little softer under her smirk. She pulls her bra off over her head and Steve forgets to be anything when she guides his hands up her torso until his palms are pressed firmly against her breasts. Steve is stupid, kisses her so she can stop looking so amused at him.

Natasha is lithe enough to get closer without Steve noticing until her hand is in his pants halfway to wrapping her fingers around his cock. Steve yelps and every muscle in his body jumps backward then ricochets forward, breath caught in his throat.

“Too much?” comes Natasha’s voice in his ear, fingers lingering at his hip.

“No,” Steve manages, a beat passes. “It’s been, it’s just--”

Steve hasn’t been touched in more than half a century, is what. She seems to have known this, though, if the sudden kisses across his shoulder were anything to go by. He exhales and his hips stutter forward. Her hands are on him again, warm and firm and reassuring as she pushes him back on the floor and pulls his pants halfway down his legs.

Steve watches her with reverence as she crawls on top of him, her knees resting on either side of his hips. She’s so strikingly beautiful, which, obviously, she’s the Black Widow--but right now she isn’t anyone except Nat. In one swift movement, she spits into her palm, grabs Steve’s cock as she angles herself, and sits right down on him.

Steve has to muffle his own shout with his fist as she sinks down slow, swearing when she’s seated in his lap again. “Holy fuck,” she exhales, Steve pleased to notice small tells like her chest heaving, her thighs twitching around his hips.

“Holy fuck” Steve agrees, louder, grasping desperately at her hips.

Steve thinks he is going to lose it as she experimentally rolls her hips, a deep hum resonating from her chest. It feels like every inch of him is on fire, filled to the brim with that type of warmth that hasn’t existed for him since makeshift tents, since Europe, since the scent of blood and rifle polish, since life-affirming reunions in the pitch dark.

Desperate to touch her, because he can, he staggers up to his elbows, then leans against one palm while his other seeks Natasha’s flushed cheeks. “Hey, Rogers,” she says sheepishly, grinning quietly at him like they’re sharing a secret. His thumb shakes over her lip, swollen from kissing him.

Steve kisses her soft, cradling her head. Natasha bites him, roughens the kiss to her own comfort, like maybe she needs to compensate for the intimacy of it. Steve goes along, follows her just like he did with his face between her legs. He’s rougher with her; their teeth scrape together, he pinches her nipples between his fingers until she hisses, he bites at her collar bone.

“Steve,” she utters, hands darting to his chest for leverage as she comes on him.

“Shit,” Steve circles his arm around her waist to hold her up. His own head drops back at the sudden rush of heat and wetness. “Natasha.” he says, hopelessly wrecked.

Once she stops shaking, she winds her arms around his neck, sliding a hand into his hair. She’s staring at him, eyes flicking to follow his every breath, every tic, every movement of his eyes. She gives the impression that she’s laying his soul out in between them for her to look at, and this.

This is what makes her a good spy. That piercing, silent look that forces you to spill your guts on the fucking ground for her. She doesn’t even have to say a word.

Or maybe Steve is just feeling raw, torn open, from the last few months and maybe she is too, their worlds turned inside out. Lied to, again. She blinks fondly, smiles at him like she’s trusting him with it.

“Okay.” Natasha interrupts, surprisingly businesslike. Without warning, she slips Steve’s arm out from under him and pushes him back to the floor. “Trust me, don’t move.”

With Natasha riding his dick, breasts basically in his face and her skin glowing, hair spilling over her forehead from where he dragged his hand through it, the whole thing feels a tiny bit less tragic. He lets her, too, doesn’t try to stop the noises that leave him. At the tail-end of one moan he can’t stop the stream of “you’re so beautiful, you’re amazing,” that his brain decides is an acceptable thing to blurt out. Natasha’s response is to fuck him harder, scrape her nails down his chest hard enough that she leaves behind a visible red trail. She’s vibrant, victorious, unbelievably pretty and herself that Steve can’t help himself: he’s never been that good at following directions.

Steve reaches and pulls Natasha in by her hair, kissing her more roughly than he has. She lets out an “oomf” of surprise but then kisses him back with that same bruising intensity. Both mourning for something they can only fight themselves.

It’s not until now that Steve realizes how tightly wound he is; he’s fit to burst with Natasha moving around him, tight and hot and her body pressed flush against his, he squeezes his eyes shut, just feeling, exhaling hard through his nose on every breath.

Steve spills into her not long after that, lucky enough her tongue was trying to fit down his throat so she wouldn’t hear the entire noise that’s trying to claw its way out of him. Still, Natasha rolls her hips, the same pace at first, but slowly moves with him until he settles. Steve realizes he’s shaking, clutching her body tightly to his by the arm wrapped around her waist.

Steve seems to black out for a few moments because when he looks around for Natasha, he doesn’t see her. It takes a couple more moments for him to realize she’s still on fucking top of him, on his dick and everything.

“So, I have a question,” Natasha fixes him with a sly grin, her chin resting on his chest. “Of which you do not have to answer, but if you _don’t_ answer it’s still kind of like you’re answering, in a way--”

Steve promptly cuts her off, already laughing into the crook of his elbow. “God, no, not this.”

Natasha continues, unperturbed. “Are you this big because of the serum or have you always been godfully endowed?”

Steve whines now, heat rising all the way up his chest to his face. “I don’t know how i’m supposed to answer that,” he laughs, partly mortified.

They snicker quietly to each other until the joke passes. Natasha doesn’t attempt to move off him, stays close. She runs a hand through his hair and he blinks in surprise when she does it again. Moments, lost to time, pass like this in silence, never losing heat.

She pats his cheek fondly, then does start to get free, extracting herself from his grip. He opens his mouth to say something but then promptly forgets how to speak at the sight of Natasha pulling off of him, slow and deliberate to gauge his reaction. Her eyes glint with pride, smirking.

Steve scrambles up, all his muscles suddenly sore. Natasha has eased onto her back, casually stretching her legs. Propped up on her elbows, Steve admires her ease, her unforgiving confidence in her body that Steve has never had. She’s flushed, glistening in sweat, eyes darker than their usual green as she watches him with rapt attention.

Steve may not have known jackshit about vaginas before today, but he sure as hell knew how to worship somebody if he wanted to. Natasha is intrigued, humming softly as he kisses his way up her torso. Steve takes his time because she did for him, because he wanted to. He eventually finds himself between her legs, sucking a bruise into her thigh until she squirmed.

“Steve,” she says, still watching him, an edge of impatience in her voice.

She bends one leg at the knee, giving Steve room, opening herself to him. Bracing himself over her, he dips his hand to feel her.

“Oh my _god_ , Nat,” Steve groans.

She’s wet, still dripping from when he came inside her. Steve hopelessly meets her gaze as he drags his fingers lightly through sodden curls, and she looks pleased, impressed with herself. “C’mon, please?” Natasha tilts her head at him. Steve slips his arm around her raised leg and brings her closer, dragging her roughly toward him.

Natasha’s eyes seem to darken at the sudden show of force, despite the number of times they’ve sparred together. He brackets her head with his free hand and then tucks his face in her neck, breathing her in. Steve sucks at her neck, feeling her pulse race on his tongue.

Natasha reaches between them and finds his cock, guiding him inside of her inch by intoxicating inch until he’s buried in her. The look she gives him--this, Steve thinks, is trust. When Steve starts to move they both exalt loudly, holding onto whatever part of each other they could reach.

Heartbreak floods through Steve just as quickly as gratitude as he fucks her, holding tight to what he hasn’t yet lost.

“Mhmm, yeah, c’mon,” Natasha coaxes him along between harsh, throaty moans he elicits each time he hits deep inside her. Her voice seems impossibly too soft for it to be hers but the blood red nails scratching his scalp and digging into the meat of his chest are undeniably her; the lithe competence she upholds even being fucked; the dark ferocity of green eyes so close to his. Undeniably.

Steve kisses her sloppy now, hard and bruising enough that their teeth clash more than once. Steve doesn’t have a second to feel self-conscious about it, all his transgressions leaving him after she’d guided his face between her legs, after she’d rode him into his own floor. Presently, she hitches her legs around his hips, altering his angle enough that a moan punches its way out of his chest.

“Nat,” he manages, fucking her hard enough now that he has to hold her in place so she won’t slip away from him.

She feels so good, so soft and yielding wrapped around him yet still strong enough that she doesn't even seem to be affected by his bulk seemingly overpowering her. He won’t last long like this, and it is clearly what she intends as she starts rolling her hips down, bracing herself with a hand at the closest wall and fucking down onto him, meeting him halfway and creating a whole new wave of heat that blindsides him.

When he comes, a broken moan crawls its way out of his throat and into her ear, one of his hands curled up tightly in her hair. Steve swears she’s holding him up, or at least half of him, as his hips stutter to a halt and he pulls out of her. Their chests heave, close enough that they can feel each other's heartbeats against their skin. For a while they don’t (can’t) move, still and panting harshly.

Steve feels his fingers start to cramp up, fisting her hair. He releases his grip and shakily smoothes his fingers through the sweaty strands. Her hand rests firmly at the nape of his neck, squeezing until he starts to come down. He rolls off her, collapsing in a heap on the rug next to her.

Staring at the ceiling, tonight at least, doesn't feel so bad with Natasha next to him. Their arms brush just enough to remind each other that they're both still there. Some time passes in blissful silence. When Steve's breathing returns to normal, he turns his head to look at her.

Natasha is staring at the ceiling too, arms crossed behind her head, the gorgeous swell of her chest rising and falling with her slow controlled breath. Sweat glistens on her skin. In the half light, the shadows of the room seem to put her muscles on display, always stronger than she seems.

Her eyebrows rise on her forehead. “See something you like?” she jokes quietly, unsmiling, not moving her head the slightest to indicate she's actually seen him.

Steve breathes hard through his nose, almost a whole laugh, and returns his gaze to the ceiling.

Abruptly, she springs up beside him. Her palm presses heavy on his pec, and she leans in like she’s about to kiss him but instead stops short and asks, “You do have a bed, right?”

Steve barks out a laugh, breaking out of his daze and she grins. A few minutes later, Steve has awkwardly thrown his sweatpants back on and shown Natasha to his bedroom and the attached bathroom. Natasha doesn’t bother putting any clothes back on. She’s in the doorway to the bathroom, clutching a towel to her chest when she turns back. “Steve,” she says, and the look in her eyes roots Steve to the ground. She takes a deep breath and looks uneasy. “I’ve been with a lot of people, before, it was kind of a job requirement. Since the leak, I’ve been thinking about that. It hasn’t been like that for a long time, but you should know. You’re one of the only times I’ve liked it.”

Without waiting for a response, Natasha turns on her heel and shuts the door behind her. Steve sits, or stands, rather, with this information, with Natasha opening up to him. It didn’t occur to Steve until now that maybe this was just as important for her as it was for him. Her admission rises up rage and admiration in Steve in equal measures.

Ten minutes later Steve is dozing on the edge of his bed when Natasha emerges from the bathroom with damp hair and, somehow, one of his shirts. Steve rouses himself as she strides toward the bed.

“Don’t offer to sleep on the couch, Rogers,” she says, sounding fondly annoyed.

Steve stops himself then slowly resumes a horizontal position, feeling like the old man he is. Natasha shuts off the light and crawls over him to the side of the bed closer to the wall. She slips under the covers and Steve finds himself joining her there. They don’t touch, just close enough to reach if they wanted to. After they fall silent, it’s only a few minutes before the weight of anxiety seeps back under Steve’s skin. Not knowing if he should, he grabs Natasha’s hand and carefully slips his fingers between hers. She squeezes it and then sidles close to him until they’re chest to chest again. Nat re-secures the blanket over their shoulders.

“Nat?”

“Hm?”

They’re both wide awake despite appearances.

“No one can change who you made yourself.”

Natasha is quiet for so long that Steve thinks she may have fallen asleep, except that she doesn’t seem to be breathing either. “Thank you.” she says eventually, several minutes later. She incrementally and deliberately relaxes herself against him again. Maybe doing something stupid just because you’re grieving isn’t the worst idea.

Steve pats her head and when he eventually dozes off, he doesn’t have a single nightmare.

**Author's Note:**

> hello! welcome to my first venture into fan fiction publishing. i am a steve/bucky first and foremost (as is probably clear, even in this work) but this idea has been with me for a long time. i'm a big advocate that, while steve is a gentleman and values his friendships, especially with natasha, this is a point in time where he might feel desperate enough to do something, if pressed. i'm an even bigger advocate that natasha values her friendships even more, a thing she never expected to happen, but she's also in a place where she might be desperate enough. steve is missing an integral part of him and he only just found out that part is still alive. if you've made it this far i thank you, this was a huge work in progress for many months, underwent many changes, and like i said, my first published piece. i have many other WIPs for the mcu so maybe if i get through this experience, i'll publish more. thanks again for reading :') mistakes are my own!


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